Page:About people (IA aboutpeople00well).pdf/93

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STRIVING.
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the whole posture showing the making of a thought!

Continued, persistent application bends time and material to its purpose. Through it the money-market might replace the term speculation by foresight or judgment, and inventions might correspond to human needs rather than to human ingenuity. Five minutes' absorption of the child's mind in the effort to learn his letters teaches more than their names. Busy people have the most time; as they give all their strength to whatever they are doing, so it is soon done and well done. Scatter-brained work and play is lengthy and fatiguing. Patience, Perseverance, and Thoroughness, the three elements of concentration, enter into the composition of a genius.

Greater than any other result of character is its blessed privilege of usefulness, the chief function of our being, the proud prerogative that man shares with nature, the test and measure of our worth in doing and being. In doing, it

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